Agenda item

The Committee considered the report of the Corporate Director of Resources that provided Members with an updated work programme for 2023/24 (for copy of report see file of minutes).

The Principal Overview and Scrutiny Officer was in attendance to present the report and advised Members that he had received notification from Ms Evans, Co-opted Member who had identified three areas of work for additional consideration. The first was early intervention in young people’s mental health. He advised that the service had indicated that this would be included as part of the Mental Health, Emotional Wellbeing and Resilience item to be considered at the 26 April 2024 meeting and was discussed at the iThrive workshop in May earlier this year. The second item was universal youth work and the service had confirmed that this was provided by colleagues in the voluntary and community service and suggest a briefing paper to members for circulation. The third item was around pastoral care in schools. The service had advised that this was an individualised service for each educational establishment so was not something that the local authority had any control, influence or oversight in the ability to look at this was therefore severely restricted.

The Principal Overview and Scrutiny Officer referred to the conversations today around EHCP and the desire of members to get a lot more detail and an item included in the work programme. If members were minded to include this, he was happy to take that forward as an addition to the work programme but indicated that this may already be included as part of a topic already identified in the programme and would advise members if this was the case.

Councillor Crute indicated that he was happy to take the advice of the Principal Overview and Scrutiny Officer with regard to the capacity of the Committee to take on the workload as presented. He continued that they needed to look closely at EHCP as there was an upward trend of delay where they could not meet the 20-week deadline for an initial assessment.

In response to a question from Mrs Gunn on the support offered to Educational Psychologists, the Chair responded that the iThrive workshop contained a lot of helpful information around this area.

The Principal Overview and Scrutiny Officer indicated that the Council have a corporate basket of indicators that are routinely reported but where they want to look at specific areas of activity and issues, they receive more detail from the service. He indicated that wherever possible when they do bring specific services areas to committee for consideration, they would look to ensure that they have appropriate performance information and data included within those updates.

Councillor Crute indicated that the performance indicators were moving all the time and the data could be deceptive and asked if there could be a review of the performance indicators.

The Principal Overview and Scrutiny Officer responded that the Quarter 4 Performance Report was the last version in the current format due to some changes to the corporate performance reporting framework.

The Corporate Equality and Strategy Manager advised that the format of the performance report would be changing in accordance with the structure contained in the Council Plan.

In response to questions on the process of changing the performance indicators reporting structure the Corporate Equality and Strategy Manager explained the process.

The Chair indicated that the process included the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Management Board.

Resolved: (i) That the work programme for 2023/2024 be agreed.

(ii) That clarification be sought on the Educational Healthcare Plans and if not already featured in the issues already identified it be included in the work programme.